


The Importance of Taking Stock

by cero_ate



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, mentions other pairings not appearing, religious conundrums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2844932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cero_ate/pseuds/cero_ate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan is happy to be home, regardless of Floki's teasing and Lagertha is amused at the changes that the monk had undergone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance of Taking Stock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izzybeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzybeth/gifts).



> Thank you to my beta, You are a rockstar!

He had never thought he’d see his fjords again. He’d hoped, wished, prayed even, but he had never thought he’d actually see them again. Not when they had decided to crucify him, or when he’d become a pet of his rescuer. He knew he was a pet, he’d been in that position before, when Ragnar had yet to see his worth, and knew that this time he wouldn’t be allowed the freedom he’d earned with Ragnar and Lagertha.

“Can you hear them?” Floki asked him roughly, a peculiar look of ecstasy on the strange one’s face that he’d seen a few times before. He thought he understood it better now “Can you? They’re happy to see me. Probably pissed that we brought you back.”

Athelstan didn’t rise to Floki’s bait. He just smiled his shy smile back at the man. He could hear them. Odin, Thor, Frigga…they clamored for his attention, fighting his own God for supremacy in his head, even as Lagertha and Ragnar fought for supremacy in his heart.

The smile widened as Bjorn came closer to him, hovering protectively. It seemed the fruit did not fall far from the tree. He rested his hand on the other’s shoulder. “Peace, son. Floki is as he ever was.” 

He knew that it was different for Bjorn, different and difficult. He was accounted as being a great warrior now, fearless and brave but not stupid. At the same time, however, he fought at the side of his family, who had seen him a youngling spitting with all the rage of an angry kitten and just as threatening. He probably shouldn’t have called Bjorn that name, but he was so used to being a spare parent to Ragnar’s children that it slipped out.

“Did you learn new stories?” The young man asked, treating him as the odd little skald his father had acquired as in days of old, once Bjorn had overcome his disdain. Athelstan smiled, and leaned back against the boxes, watching as nearby warriors perked up. Ragnar’s men liked his odd stories, even if they rarely admitted it. But that was how Norsemen were, prideful children always ready for another treat. With the manners of children too, taking as they wished and hurting each other. But some days that was what Athelstan wanted and needed. It was home.

~~~  
Lagertha had come to find him almost as soon as the battle had finished. He had known she would be worried, having seen his wounds and knowing he would be on his own. It was her way. It was all their way, the overprotective lot.

“My Lady.” Athelstan bowed, splattered in blood, and she hissed in concern. He smiled at that, continuing to clean his axe of the havoc it had wrought among Horik’s men. He had held his own remarkably well, he thought, especially considering he had been out of practice for months. But if Torstein could rise from his bed to do battle, Athelstan couldn’t let a little thing like lingering wounds stop him. He couldn’t quite hold a sword anymore, not with his hands the way they were, but he’d been able to handle the axe that Floki had found for him well enough to guard the children’s quarters from the intent ravagers.

No one touched the children on his watch, after all.

She smiled, as much in approval as in relief. “You fought well, monk.”

“If I fought well, I’m hardly a monk, my lady,” Athelstan answered ruefully. He wasn’t, and the last few weeks had brought that home sharper than ever. “I am a warrior, less skilled than you, but the enemy didn’t break my shield wall either. Would you let me examine your wounds?”

“So sure I took them then?” Lagertha teased, entering the tiny bedroom allocated to Athelstan. It didn’t have the air of one that was lived in often, even accounting for the fact that he had been gone for months.

“The harder you fight, the more clean-up there is after a battle, I’ve found,” Athelstan said. “And you beat Ragnar to me, by the way.”

“Then you must have taken a few wounds of your own,” Lagertha teased back. She seemed to like this new Athelstan, who could hold his own. He liked it himself. He knew she wished that he had come with her and Bjorn, but she seemed to accept that he had blossomed here in a way he wouldn’t have been able to at her court. 

“I have already bound them, before I dealt with my axe, let alone went to find a monk who carries an axe into battle,” Athelstan said, rising from his bed to give her the room to sit and let him take care of her. “Now, my lady, let me bind your wounds before I must lift you into my bed.”

“You could try.” The look she flashed him was predatory, then amused when it didn’t cause him to retreat the way it might have before. That intrigued her more than Ragnar’s taste in women did. What _had_ they been teaching the little monk. Had he shed his prudish ways?

He smiled at her. “I would hope I don’t have to, as a wise shield-maid would allow a humble servant to take care of her.”

“You’ve changed Athelstan. Do you sleep with my former husband and his lady?” Lagertha asked bluntly.

“Aye, and do more,” Athelstan admitted. “It’s not…a permanent arrangement, as some have. But their warmth is welcome in the winter, when the cold winds blow fiercest.”

“Do you desire them?” Lagertha asked curiously. She wondered if he desired Aslaug as he had once desired her. The other woman was her own fierce but…she didn’t honestly like sharing. If she had, she would have stayed with Ragnar after all.

“I desire many things,” Athelstan said simply. He had not bedded Aslaug. The woman was still of childbearing years and he had no desire to falsely sire a child with the wife of his best friend and lover. But he had been bedded by Ragnar, and bedded in return. And often, they simply slept.

“Do you desire me, Athelstan?” Lagertha pressed closer, taking off armor and clothes, displaying herself without shame to him, with the added benefit of revealing the wounds he had asked to see.

“I always have, Lagertha,” Athelstan admitted, hands gentle as he probed the wounds. Blessedly few and, as with him, most of the blood not belonging to her. He cleaned her of it, as reverently as he had his own axe.

She took the rag from him, and cleansed him of the blood that was left on him, tracing his scars with gentle but callused fingers. “Have you been with other women?”

“No,” Athelstan admitted, breath caught in his throat as she replaced fingers with lips.

“Then I shall lead you,” Lagertha said, drawing him down into his own bed and consecrating it with him to Freyja for the first time.


End file.
